Many modern machines may be equipped and/or customized with capabilities or features that allow experienced operators to more efficiently perform certain tasks associated with the machine. Such capabilities and features, which may be properly executed or utilized by experienced machine operators, are often improperly employed by inexperienced machine operators. Improper use of certain machine capabilities may lead to inefficient machine operation, excessive wear to machine components, and, potentially, damage to the machine.
Some systems have been developed for adjusting and/or customizing certain machine features based on the skill level and/or experience of the operator. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,912 (“the '912 patent”) to Skiver et al. The '912 patent describes an information display system for a vehicle rear view mirror assembly. The system of the '912 patent may prompt vehicle drivers for identification and set a speed limit for the vehicle based on skill level, age, and driving record of the driver. The speed limit may be displayed on the vehicle rear view mirror assembly aside the actual speed of the machine, thereby notifying the driver of actual speed of the vehicle in comparison with the customized driver speed limit.
Although the system of the '912 patent may efficiently customize certain operational parameters of a vehicle based on driver skill level for vehicles that involve a small number of drivers, it may be insufficient for large machine fleets where many different drivers may operate a single vehicle. For example, the system of the '912 patent requires that profiles for each driver be defined in the system and associated with a driver identification that, when entered by the driver prior to or during vehicle operation, retrieves the driver profile. Although programming driver profiles for each vehicle driver may not be particularly cumbersome when there are a limited number of drivers authorized to use a particular vehicle, it may be time-consuming for project environments that may have large numbers of machines, each machine supporting a large number of authorized operators.
Furthermore, in certain professional working environments, skill level, experience, and training levels for vehicle operators may change very rapidly. Manually managing and updating driver profiles for each machine in a large fleet of machines each time skill level associated with a single driver changes may be time-consuming, inefficient, and may lead to data entry errors.
The presently disclosed systems and methods for adjusting machine parameters are directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.